Zannah was at the desk in the study when the morning’s rotation completed.
The lamp at the desk was not lit; the high window’s eastern light was sufficient. The folio of Aris materials had been moved from the third fold back to the desk’s right hand four days prior, on the morning Zannah had returned to the standing operational rhythm. The Marvash file had been closed and archived in the cabinet at the far wall. Tovek’s last communication on the Demici cover documentation sat at the desk’s left hand, where Zannah had been working with it across the past two days.
The Veiled Course operated at its full baseline. The Drawn Breath ran beneath. The Quiet Hands held steady where Zannah’s discipline had been positioning them since the recovery had returned her capacity. The household’s deeper architecture had reassembled to its standing state across the year and three months of the apprenticeship. The small specific differences the past several weeks had produced were now folded into the architecture as continuing texture.
Cognus came in at the standing morning hour.
She crossed from the door to the chair across the desk and took her position without instruction. The apprentice register had reset to its standing form during the morning’s rotation, after the recovery period’s reduced cadence. Zannah was Master again. Cognus was apprentice again. The standing architecture held.
“The morning,” Zannah said.
“The accounts are at standing tempo. Vesh has the harbor coordination in hand. Telar reports nothing unusual at the perimeter. Tovek’s last filing has not produced additional material since the previous communication.”
“Acknowledged.”
Cognus did not move from the chair. She had completed the morning report. She had not withdrawn. The Master had not dismissed her.
Zannah caught the holding and read it for what it was.
“You have something.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Continue.”
Cognus straightened in the chair the way she straightened when she was about to deliver something she had been preparing across some interval. The shift was small; the Master read it cleanly.
“There is something from Garqi I have been holding.”
Zannah considered her across the desk.
“Across the recovery period.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
Cognus took a breath. Not hesitation — the small inhalation that had preceded operational delivery in her Huntress days, when the trade had required her to speak only what mattered. The pattern returned now.
“At the withdrawal. Three civilians on the street. The vendor at his cart. An older man at a shop doorway. A Twi’lek woman with a child. The vendor and the older man were civilians watching three armed strangers cross a street. The Twi’lek was not.”
“What was she.”
“An observer. The child was her cover. The child watched the team as she did. Children do not watch lightsabers with that quality of attention. The child was performing the role.”
“Force-sensitive.”
“At minimum. Possibly trained. Her sensitivity did not match the doctrinal shapes I have learned from you. Something else.”
“Why did you not surface this on the freighter.”
“You were not in a state to receive it. Tovek was carrying the post-operation work. The information had no operational use during your recovery. I would have raised it on your full return. The morning came at the right interval.”
Zannah did not respond immediately. She held what the apprentice had brought and worked through what it implied.
“You have been thinking about her.”
“I have.”
“What have you arrived at.”
Cognus took a small beat. “The household has been visible to someone we did not detect. We do not know when she first became aware of us. We do not know what she has done with what she has seen. And if there is one practitioner outside the Demici and ourselves, there may be others. The picture is larger than we have been working with.”
Zannah nodded once. “Recommend.”
“We pursue her. At distance. Tovek’s conventional channels for physical description — I can give him enough to begin. We do not approach her. We do not produce signatures she could read at her end. The Demici pursuit continues unchanged.”
“The Force-side of pursuing her.”
“Beyond me. My precognition does not project to unknown targets at distance. I have been waiting on someone in the household who could.”
“You have been correct.”
Zannah did not move from the desk. The conversation had reached the point she had been working toward across the recovery period. She had not known, until Cognus had brought the matter forward, that this particular morning was the one her preparation had been preparing for.
“There is a discipline,” she said, “that I have been developing across the past three months. It is my own. The corpora gave me the framework — Senn-Vec, Pelu’s acquisitions, the older Sith texts I have been working through. The assembly is mine.”
“Yes, Master.”
“It is specific to you. It will not operate through me. I will hold the conditions. The work itself will be your work.”
Cognus inclined her head.
“Your precognition operates from your position forward in time. You catch what is about to happen near you. The discipline redirects the capability — the precognition will operate from a target’s position instead of yours. You will catch what is about to happen near her, wherever she is.”
Cognus took a beat. “The anchor is her Force-signature.”
“Yes. You read the signature at first encounter, hold it cleanly, project through it. The reading is taxing. It will not produce a complete picture on first attempt. It deepens across deployments as the anchor stabilizes.”
“And you hold the conditions.”
“The Veiled Course at extended radius around you. The radius conceals the projection from anything she could read at her end. The Drawn Breath supports your state across the duration. I do not interfere with the precognition itself. The precognition is yours.”
“Yes, Master.”
“We attempt the first deployment now. The Twi’lek’s signature is in your deeper layer. Surface it. Hold it. Project. Read what is about to happen near her at this moment.”
Cognus closed her eyes.
✦
The first reading took perhaps eight minutes.
The Veiled Course extended around her at the radius Zannah had calibrated for the work. The Drawn Breath operated at the support state. The Quiet Hands held the apprentice’s deeper layer steady while the precognitive capability rose from its standing position and reached toward the anchor Cognus had surfaced from the Garqi observation.
The anchor was the Twi’lek female. The signature held in Cognus’s deeper layer was specific enough to function as the projection target. The capability reached.
What Cognus caught was partial.
A vessel. Small, not commercial in any standard sense. The interior darker than the exterior light suggested. A control position at the vessel’s forward section. The Twi’lek female at the position, alone, with her hands at her sides rather than at the controls. The vessel was not in atmosphere. The vessel was in space. The space around the vessel was not at any landmark Cognus could identify.
The precognition caught what was about to happen near her in the next several seconds. The Twi’lek female would turn her head slightly to the left. She would not move from her position. She would continue holding her hands at her sides. The vessel would continue at whatever course it was on.
The reading ended.
Cognus opened her eyes.
She had produced what she had produced. The picture was thin. The work had taxed her enough that the deeper layer where the apprenticeship discipline lived was now operating at reduced state for several hours.
“Report.”
She delivered the reading cleanly. The vessel. The interior. The Twi’lek’s position. The course continuing. The forecast of the small head movement.
Zannah sat with the material a beat before responding.
“The first reading is what it is. It will deepen with deployment. We do not attempt it again today — the capability needs to recover at this stage. We try again at the right interval.”
“Yes, Master.”
“We have what we need to start. She is on a vessel, currently in space. We do not know where, or the vessel’s class, or her purpose. We know she exists, we know she moves, and we know your discipline can reach her.”
Cognus inclined her head.
“The interior. Anything else you can surface before the deeper layer closes?”
Cognus took a moment. The reading’s material sat at the edge of what she could still access cleanly. She worked it.
“No standard cockpit pattern I could identify. The control position was unusual. The interior had a sense of being a residence more than a vessel. Her posture there was someone who lived in the seat, not someone who worked it. The vessel is her home.”
Zannah nodded.
“The class itself I could not place. The interior elements did not match any class I have been trained to recognize.”
“Acknowledged.”
Zannah did not press further. The reading had produced what the first reading would produce. The capability would deepen as Cognus’s discipline learned the work.
“We activate Tovek’s channels with what you can give us,” Zannah said. “Physical description, specific markers from the Garqi observation that you can still recover cleanly. Twi’lek female, light blue if you can confirm the shade, lek’ku markings, the eyes, the hands, anything about clothing. Enough for his channels to begin.”
“I will have it for him within the hour.”
“Good.”
Cognus did not rise. The Master had begun the work; the apprentice waited for what further the morning would produce.
Zannah considered her across the desk.
“The Demici pursuit holds at current tempo. Tovek’s missing-years work stays primary on that thread. Your discipline deploys against the Twi’lek at intervals I will calibrate. Two parallel threads, neither disrupting the other. The household has been seen and we now know it. We proceed as that requires.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Withdraw to the eastern wing. Finish the description for Tovek. Rest your deeper layer the rest of the day. We try the discipline again at midday, two days out.”
“Yes, Master.”
Cognus rose. She inclined her head and withdrew.
✦
The household ran on at its restored tempo across the rest of the morning.
Vesh continued at the harbor accounts. Telar continued at the perimeter. Zannah remained at the study desk and worked through the implications the morning had produced.
The Demici materials at the right hand of the desk. The new threat picture at the desk’s center as Zannah developed the framework that would carry it. The Marvash archive at the cabinet, closed. The Pelu correspondence at the desk’s left hand, where Tovek’s most recent integration had filed it.
The architecture had been simpler at the morning’s start. It was no longer simple. The household had two parallel threats now. The threats might be connected. The threats might not be connected. The work would develop the picture across whatever interval the work required.
Zannah worked at the desk through the rest of the morning and did not leave the study until the midday meal.
✦
The vessel held its course through the empty space between Mayagil and Pollillus, deep in the sector that bore the first system’s name.
Sariya Karith sat in the cockpit in the posture she always held when reading the flows.
The cockpit was small. It had been built for a single pilot and configured by her, across the years of her ownership, to serve as the only operational space the vessel required. Behind the cockpit was the living compartment. Behind that, the small engine bay. The whole vessel ran approximately eighteen meters from nose to tail. The cockpit itself measured slightly more than two meters across at its widest point.
Her hands rested at her sides. The custom black gloves covered them completely. The two fingers of the right hand had been missing for the eleven years past the lightsaber construction error. They were not visible beneath the glove’s shape, which had been cut to suggest a full hand. The lek’ku banding ran taut down her back at the calibration she had been holding for the past several days. The criss-cross of the leather straps produced the discipline that held the lek’ku at the position the reading required. The copper and leather braided tress hugged the skin at her forehead at its standing placement.
The flows around her ran at their ordinary morning texture.
The vessel itself produced its own small ambient signature that she had long ago learned to read past. The crew of a small commercial freighter four sectors distant produced the small thread of attention she had been tracking for the past two days. The Hutt operation at the spaceport at Saleucami produced the larger sustained pressure she had been monitoring across the past several months. The Force-flows of the broader galactic activity moved at their ordinary rhythms behind all of these.
What she caught now was not at any of those.
It was small. It was at the periphery of her sensing. It had not been there an hour ago. It had not been there yesterday. It had not been there in any of the readings she had performed across the past several weeks since she had departed Garqi.
She extended her attention toward it.
The attention found a shape she could not fully resolve. The shape was not a Force-presence of the kind she usually read. It was something adjacent. It had a quality of being directed toward her rather than ambient in the flows. The directing was small. The directing had a discipline behind it that she had not encountered in her years of reading the flows.
She held her attention on the shape for several seconds.
The shape did not resolve further.
After a longer moment Sariya let her attention return to its standing position. The shape would surface again, or it would not. The flows would continue at their ordinary texture or they would not. She had caught what she had caught and would carry it forward into her continued reading.
She turned her head slightly to the left to consult the navigation board at her right.
The vessel held its course.
The Mayagil sector continued at its deeper rhythms. The shape at the periphery did not return.
Sariya Karith sat in the cockpit and read the flows.